Research Council Meeting

Friday, December 9, 2016

Attendance – Johna Leddy, Jane Nachtman, Jane Paulsen, John Nelson, Faryle Nothwehr, Barbara Eckstein, Weimin Han, Carolyn Colvin, Kristan Worthington, Nicholas Borcherding, Elizabeth Constantine, Jessica Boyle, Robert Kirby

Others –Rich Hichwa, Ann Ricketts, Jennifer Lassner, Michael Weaver

Item 1: Minutes from the November 18^th Research Council Meeting

• Minutes were reviewed and approved.

Item 2: OVPR&ED Updates (Dan Reed)

• OVPR will be screening four finalists for the open Assistant Vice President for Economic Development position. The first finalist is scheduled to arrive for on-campus interviews December 11^th.
• The Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle (UAV) committee is reviewing the final draft of the policy it has been charged with creating regarding drones and other UAV’s use on UI property. Much of the policy is bound by FAA regulations because the main campus is within five miles of an airport.
• A Human Research Protections Task Force has been assembled and held its first meeting on December 9^th. The task force is charged with streamlining the human subjects approval process on campus while maintaining strict protections for study participants.
• VP Reed’s IP Committee has been meeting to update the University’s policies regarding intellectual property. The policy has not been updated in more than 10 years, so it needs to be reviewed for both compliance and effectiveness.
• The 21^st Century CURES act passed both houses of the US Congress which would add five billion dollars in federal funding for biomedical research.

Item 3: Time Savings Subcommittee (Johna Leddy)

• Leddy discussed the charge of the Research Council subcommittee and its plans for finding strategies that could be broadly implemented to save faculty and staff across campus up to two hours per week. The goal is to provide more time as well as more distraction-free time across the University, ideally increasing the quantity and quality of research at the institution.
• Dan Reed provided statistics on the declining dollars awarded per proposal which lead to more time spent writing proposals for fewer dollars and even less time spent on actual research. Success rate has largely remained unchanged, but award sizes have decreased.

Item 4: Streamlining Undergraduate Research (Paul Ruales Rosero, Titus Hou, & ZeFan Qin)

• This group presented to Research Council about potentially developing an integrated web portal that would streamline access to researchers across campus looking for undergraduates interested in working on research projects. The platform would be based on matching researchers with undergraduates that have the same interests. The hope is that this would increase the number of students who participate in undergraduate research during their time at the University of Iowa.